Sunday, October 01, 2017

The Smear

The Smear: How Shady
Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and
How You Vote by Sharyl Attkisson

(Update edit: I should mention right off the bat that Attkisson was an Emmy-award winning CBS reporter for many years. I don't know if she still is. I think not.)

I have cynically said for years that Republicans lie 50% of
the time and Democrats 90%. I may be upping those numbers to 70 and 95 after
reading this book.

There are two related books happening at once here. The
second title, How Shady Political
Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Voteis about the manipulation of information in
general. How the media gets co-opted by politicians and groups who offer to do
their work for them and restrict access to those who agree to write favorably
or do softball interviews. While this
has been going on as long as I have been following the news, Attkisson provides
solid evidence that it has become much worse, especially over the last decade.
She repeatedly uses the image of The Truman Show, where an entire false reality
is inserted. She means it. She doesn't believe that much of anybody actually
gets the news these days.

She names names and gives examples.A fair sampling of individuals are identified,
but a lot of the list is groups who are doing all the behind-the-scenes work.
Information-managing is a pretty formidable PR and oppo research business at
this point, employing thousands of people, not only in DC and New York but
for/against major industries and causes. I had not known how extensively the
money and influence is spreading out to smaller players on the web, not only to
helpfully run stories to create an impression of a groundswell of public
opinion, but to comment and push back against a site’s general thrust.Undermining the opposition’s information may
be more important than providing your own. Notice the frequent-flier opponent
commenters on the sites you frequent. They may be getting paid for that work. She describes "transactional" journalism throughout the book.

She describes how the fact-checking sites get manipulated, and the ways that even Wikipedia and Snopes can shade things to create - or allow - a narrative. (Yes, even Snopes, especially the last half-dozen years.)

The second book is The
Smear, and this is a textbook about how its done, how to spot it, and who’s
doing it. It is all as we suspected and worse. It has multiplied in the
internet era, enough that people who speak up can be destroyed virtually
overnight.Most outrage you read about
these days is manufactured. Examples are provided - ones you will recognize,
such as the sudden destruction of Don Imus over the Rutgers basketball comment.
He is a shock jock and had been making such comments for years, but coincidentally, it occurred when he had
taken to calling Hillary "that buck-toothed witch, Satan." Media
Matters (of course!) assigned Ryan Chiachierre to listen to every syllable Imus
uttered until they had one they could astroturf, creating the impression that
there was general outrage about his Rutgers comment.There wasn't. At least until there was an
engineered outrage against him, anyway.

It worked. These people know how to isolate you and force
even people who like you to distance themselves from you and deny you.

It’s important to remember that much of the information
being spread is at least partly true, and the criticism deserved, but the
timing and placement are such that equivalent truths are obscured. Lying is
only one tool in the box. (Though it is used frequently.) Secondly, the semitrue
information is often the sort that is only uncovered by private detectives. Also,
much of what is put forward is opinion disguised as fact.Nor is this simply a matter of reasonably
hiring better, though legal and above-board PR firms than your opponents. When
journalists are corrupted, and entire networks and news organisations are willingly
seduced into reporting scandals about one side but not the other, or
undermining one set of critics but not the other, it may be legal, and the
information true, but still deceitful.

I had to keep reminding myself of this in certain
sections.I would think to myself, Okay, this is a little low and cheap, but
what they are doing is completely legal.Let’s not oversell this. Then I would remember: the title of the
book is The Smear. Even if the
information is true, it may have been organized and packaged by professionals,
who are suppressing counter-information.Its main focus is not to force investigations, but to instruct the
reader how to see through this.

Or one main focus, anyway.Ms. Attkisson clearly wants to make sure that some important people get
exposed and publicly kicked. For example (in keeping with Assistant Village
Idiot’s renewed awareness of stories that have gone down the memory hole), she
reminds us that during the investigation of Bill Clinton in the late 90’s,
Kathleen Willey had her children threatened during the period she was
testifying about him.This came up as an
addition to the description of the smear tactics used against her. Border and Customs and ATF whistleblowers, including Fast and Furious.

So who’s worse, you all want to know, and I have
intentionally dragged my feet in revealing.She repeatedly says it’s many groups: industries and corporations trying
to highlight some information while burying other, both political parties,
supposedly neutral media sources, and hosts of advocacy groups or lobbyists,
and gives examples. More than once I saw
a name heave into view and thought Oh no,
not them.I thought they were among the
good guys. Most prominently, she comes back to three villains:Sidney Blumenthal, David Brock, Hillary
Clinton. She multiplies example upon example. Even subtracting out that trio
she seems to have more examples of liberals and Democrats, but those three
dwarf all other players in her estimation.I was surprised she referenced Barack Obama as little as she did.Perhaps she thought she had already covered
that in her previous book Stonewalled. For
conservatives and libertarians who sense this very easily about others, it pays
to remember that there are lots of people who try to get their word out by
getting their story into Rush Limbaugh's hands, or Jonah Goldberg's or Glenn
Reynolds. Those people can't read everything and rely on people to send them
stories, news, and immediate counterarguments.They develop a network of people and organisations they trust. There
doesn't have to be anything the least illegal or even unethical about
this.It might just be like-minded
people cooperating and sharing resources.

Yet it can also bring pressure to bear far more quickly than
you or I could do, and one can see how it could easily go bad. They have no
obligation to tell you the other side.They are trying to convince you of an entire array of ideas.Let the other guy tell the other side.

The textbook part, Smears 101, is very helpful.It confirms much of what I suspected, and
added things I kicked myself for not having seen on my own. The simple steps of
the smear are described, so that ye may be ready. Here’s one reminiscent of CS
Lewis, who suggested when one sees the word debunked
or discredited, it is worth asking “When?
How? By Whom?” Attkisson suggests something very similar, that the use of these
words is often a sign that no one actually has debunked or discredited the idea
– they are used much more often when untrue than when true.

Predictably, if you Bing, Google, or DuckDuckGo for her
first book, the second entry is from Media Matters discrediting the book in a
sneering, insulting manner, relying heavily on irrelevant but emotion-laden
details. Also, if you browse through the Amazon reviews, you can spot which
ones are professionally done. Attkisson raises your awareness and you skill
level in these matters and hopefully, encourages you to use them against your
own side as well.

****

Almost the last half of the book is about the 2016 campaign, as she is fascinated by the Trump phenomenon that takes smears full-bore and seems to benefit from them, even when they are true. Though Donald Trump is perceived as an attacking and smearing politician, this is because he does it all on his own, right out in front of others. Obama and Hillary do this more artfully, and have network that creates and then supports their attacks. He doesn't have any network of information-placers, attack dogs, or softball interviewers. Or at least, he didn't used to.

8 comments:

I find this interesting in that I see the author's name, and immediately think "isn't that the paranoiac who was fired by CBS for being political?"

But going to Wikipedia (which cannot be assumed to be unbiased) I see the link to a story pushed by Brock's "Media Matters" about her allegedly hacked devices, and their report at https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/29/federal-report-investigation-found-no-evidence/202332 perfectly lines up with the thesis above -- it cleverly omits mention of her CBS work computer being compromised, as reported by people at CBS other than her who sought and got independent expert confirmation. And my recollection about her departure from CBS doesn't seem to fit with the evidence presented there either.

That's the sort of spin/respin undermining she is writing about. She does not reference that incident in this book. As I noted at the end, she may have covered that material in Stonewalled, which I have not read. She resigned from CBS, was not fired, though such things are sometimes ambiguous.

I laughed when I read "even Snopes." They're a very serious offender. I often check stories there and, if there is the least political whiff about the story, routinely conclude that the analysis is wildly biased, even if a little good information can still be gleaned from it. They're not bad when it comes to debunking run-of-the-mill urban legends and fake internet memes, especially quotations attributed to surprising people in anonymous poster form.

Texan99, I find them very useful if you need to prove something to a left-leaning friend. If Snopes says that it is not true, that is much more convincing to someone then sending them an article from the Daily Caller or something similar.

@ Granite Dad - true. I had a helluva time finding all-liberally biased sources for my gun control FB discussion last night (I hope you skipped it), but I managed it, and I know linking to Washington Post and Boston Globe articles kept some dismissal at bay.